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Looked at my Facebook stream this morning. One of my "friends" joined a group: Thank George Bush. It does not appear to have been joined in any sortof ironic way either.

I'm not even sure how to process that concept.

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Random Non-Sequiters

There is no change.

There are too many interconnected forces acting in concert. There is no great will, but there is a direction.

The direction cannot be changed because there is no great will to change it. Small wills are overwhelmed by the interconnected forces, and all wills are small in the face of ever greater interconnected forces.

The only truth I know, is the people want to be lied to. There is a version of the world they want to be. That version of reality may be based on reason, or not, but it's most certainly incomplete and will require vast external and internal delusions to maintain, however solid it's ground. Anything that does not fit the individual hardwired point of view will be rejected, and the messenger killed-- if possible.

People want examples of success before they act. But to find an example, is to find something that already is. To do something that has never been done is impossible when a preexisting example of success is a mandate before action.

Power comes from inequity. To be equal is to have no power. If all men are ever truly ever created equal, then noone will have power.

People seek power, and therefore embrace inequity as long as they feel they are on the weighted side of the teeter totter.

Power is an illusion. Your odds of getting struck by lightning in a given year according to the NWS is 1 in 750,000. The odds do not care about how structured or solidly grounded your powercenter is. Ultimately over the course of your life, you have a 100% chance of death.

Entropy wins.

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Random Non-Sequiters

» Hopefully Dollhouse which starts in a few weeks, does not suck. I need a new ongoing sci-fi/action show to add to my watch roster.

» Haven't seen much about this, and it might be a little Soap Operaish but this alternate history series Kings looks like it might be worth one episode at least (or maybe not March 19th will tell I suppose)

» Heard that Feb 2, Jott.com will no longer offer a free service. Jott is a service that you can call on your cellphone and it will transcribe your text. You can use it for leaving yourself notes, or for updating Twitter, the paid version converts your voice to email too. I use it infrequently, maybe once a month. So it's no great loss. Dial2do.com looks to do the same thing as Jott though, so I might try that as a replacement service.

» Last weekend I ran into someone in an online game room that I knew from the internet (not searched for or found by, just happened to be in a “room” of 5 people and 1 of them was someone I “internet knew”). Thought that was really weird. I've never “ran” into someone in a real time fashion on the internet. At the mall sure, but the internet is a huge place and to just run into someone, well that tripped me out a little.

» Did I mention I'm bummed that Google is dropping Notebook. Current users can keep using it for now at least. It's a bummer, I like Google Notebook.

Let's Go Surfing

» Danny Elfman is doing the score for Terminator Salvation that's pretty cool, hopefully he does use some of the classic Terminator bits. I love the music in the various Terminator incarnations.

» fixmyhtml.com is a simple website where you paste in your HTML and it fixes it.

» Check out this Ottoman to store your Rockband stuff.

» ReadWriteWeb article pronouncing the death of Enterprise RSS. A little premature I think, we're about 2 to 3 years from having workers who are used to RSS entering the workforce. Enterprise RSS isn't dead, it hasn't even gotten started yet.

» Map of the Star Wars Galaxy

» How to printout blank calendars in Outlook 2007.

» They might be able to develop a love vaccine. Now that's an interesting concept. Probably would change the world alot more than the Polio Vaccine.

» Good news, you may not be as real as you think you are. You may just be a 3D hologram representation of 2D data.

Videos

» What do you get when you combine the crappiness of Twilight with the crappiness of High School Musical? Twilight High School Musical. And it's not any better than the first two either.

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Random Non-Sequiters

» I made a crockpot full of chili today. I started it in the morning and let it slowcook for over 4 hours. It was very good. I'll also be having chili tomorrow I think-- and quite possibly Monday as well.

» Looks like there are two waves of Green Lantern figures coming from DC Direct, both based on the Blackest Night storyline. Wave 1 features Black Lantern Zombie superman, Alpha Lantern Bodika, A Blue Lantern and a Red Lantern. Wave 2 Features John Stewart, a Yellow Lantern, an Indigo Lantern and Zombie Black Lantern Martian Manhunter.

» Possibly the last computer I'll ever need.

Convertible Eee PC touch, goes from Laptop to Tablet PC. I'm pretty happy with my current Eee PC, but a 9” screen that folds to a multi-touch tablet pc, well that's about it right there. To have the functionality of my current Eee, but to be able to both hold the Eee as a flat tablet for reading, as well as to be able to scribble notes by hand and draw on it? For an Eee price hopefully? I can't think of anything else I'd really need to do with a mobile PC.

» I bought a 1 gig MicroSD card for my 1gig Sandisk MP3 player this past week. I'm sure billion gig iPod owners scoff at only a mere 2 gigs of audio, but I overwelmingly use my Mp3 player for audio podcasts, and I think that should do me for the near future at least. I've actually been fine with just the 1 gig. Normally I load it with podcast shows once a week for my commute to and from work. When the weather is nice I also listen to them on walks outside. I got the MicroSD just to make it a little easier to load Mp3s from work or from my Eee. It's easier to load the MicroSD card then to carry around the Sandisks' USB cord.

» My cell contract is up this month. I think I'll hold off upgrading until summer. I'll probably stay with Sprint. I'm interested in seeing the Palm Pre or the Samsung Android phone. The first is definitely coming out this summer, the latter is rumored to be. Here's what I use my cell for: phone calls, gmail, twitter, photos, mobile camcorder and some web (I also occasioanlly watch Sprint TV CNN). I'm sure with either of the above devices, my web use will go up. I imagine over the next few years, all of our web use will go up. Currently, I have a 2 year old Samsung A900M, it's been a remarkably good phone.

» I realized today that I regularly shop at 6 different Meijer stores. That's a lot of Meijer stores.

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Viacom are dicks

Last night I got a note from Youtube that a video I had placed on there was taken down by request of Viacom.

What was the infringing video you might ask? Well it was a 5 min clip of two year old Scott Baio MTV reality show. The clip featured a former co-worker of mine that ended up on the show, and I had posted the short 5 min edited video to go along with a blog posting (also about 2 years ago) I did about the the coworkers' appearance on the show.

Way to go Viacom, I'm sure you've protected your lucrative Scott Baio Reality Show DVD buying business or Hulu distribution rights, by issuing a take down of my 5 min clip that basically didn't even feature Scott Baio.

I looked on my Youtube channel and I had an additional eight or so, short two to three min (or even shorter), videos that were captured from TV. Rather than deal with potential future Youtube hassle, I decided to take those down.

I'll probably just post/host those few stupid clips, which being one to three years old themselves now, probably have no relevance anyway, on my own site on a future archive page.

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Friends Adam and Comfort are now offering Issue #1 of their comic series The Uniques as a FREE Download. Issues #2 thru #5 are available for 99¢. All 5 issues are also available as Printed comics for $5.

If you haven't read Issue #1 yet. There's no longer any excuse, because, hey it's a FREE download!

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Random Non-sequiters

» I watched a new CBC Canadian Drama yesterday Being Erica. It's a fairly lighthearted show. I would describe it as mixing Samantha Who with Journeyman.

Thirty-two years old and nowhere near her proper life path, Erica Strange gets to work on understanding where she went wrong in her past with the help of Dr. Tom. In each episode Erica relives a part of her past that she regrets and has the chance to do it again the right way.

Only seen the one episode so far (only 2 have aired) but based on first impressions, Good show. Seek out and see. (I think you might be able to watch the 1st episode at the link above?)

» Really cold outside in West Michigan today. Single digits. Fortunately, though, very low wind.

» Read that Google is droping some services. Two of note, Google Video and Google Notebook. I haven't used Google Video much and there probably isn't much point to it for them since they own Youtube. Google Notebook is a neat little app though, and I've been using it quite abit lately. Fortunately they are going to continue to support current Google Notebook users, but apparently they are not going to allow new users to use the service. Bummer.

» Very happy it's almost the weekend again.

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Random Non-Sequiters

In Michigan it is just too dark, too much in the Winter. It was dark when I went home from work, It's dark when I get up. When it's not dark, It's overcast and gray.

Where it's not dark: work. Recently a couple months ago they intstalled over head lighting. Lots of it too. It's the most artificial neutral all encompassing overbearing lighting system you could imagine. It makes one long for the 'well lit' spaces of a 1970s department store changing area-- yeah it's that bad.

Recently I got demoted at work. It has been an interesting demotion so far. I did not get less pay, so that's good. Technically, I'm even in a more interesting area doing more interesting work, and that is also good. I'm actually even working closer with some more capable people, so that is also good. So in many ways calling it a demotion is not very accurate. What really happened was another wave of structured process has washed over my office in the last year. More structure, less human initiative. More individual actors constrained along predefined process flowcharts. I'm pleased to be in a more forward looking area, at a time the organization is even more involved perfecting running the machinery of some entrenched venerable processes of which I'm no longer much a part. Hopefully it is an interim. I have a feeling of waiting to be asked to do something, but as the process becomes more and more all encompassing, it seems only the gestalt of the process can ask for anything as the individual actors are stuck on those predefined flow chart paths. And I question whether the gestalt can truly ask for anything interesting. And should I suggest anything, it seems it will be a lot of work to get the gestalt's attention.

I've got a couple good friends I see every other day or so. Some others I see once a week. Oddly most of my daily human interaction seems to come from following twitter streams, facebook timelines, the occasional IM status update and blog feeds of efriends. It is a peculiar situation, to be so primarily connected to what is ether.

Things aren't physically quiet. There's noise all around. Blur lines of motion this way and that. Clanking and banging noise of all types. With all that going on around me though, it's still very very silent.

Did I mention how dark it is in Michigan in January?

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FCC's Kevin Martin proposes alternatives for delaying DTV transit
Maybe I'm just cynical but I don't think the Big O is serious about delaying this switchover. I think the whole delay has been brought up so that if DTV transition does go wrong, the O White House will have political cover by being able to say "we thought the switch should have been delayed."

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Let's Go Surfing

» X-Wing Hot Dog Cooker serves no purpose except to be awesome.

» Snapter is a neat piece of software that helps you use your digital camera as a scanner. Makeuseof.com has a nice article on it.

» Jon Taplin has an interesting article titled Advertising's Folly

This is a bottle of Tide detergent. It costs about $7 at your local market. It has less than $1 of ingredients in it. The rest is packaging, marketing, “shelf space fees” and profit. Tide’s manufacturer, Procter and Gamble spends $255 million per month in U.S. advertising for all its products.

In the first six months of the year, General Motors spent around $200 million per month in advertising to sell 250,000 cars and trucks. That’s close to $1000 per vehicle for marketing.

» Robert Scobble interview with 12seconds' web 2.0 people. part 1 and part 2.

» I haven't tried this yet, but iSpring Converter which converts Powerpoint to Flash SWFs looks to be pretty cool.

» The Newspaper Spider-man just had his own Brand New Day. Who knew there was even still a newspaper Spider-man?

» I really want to think of something to try and make with Shapeways which is a 3D printing company. This 7.5" action figure looks pretty pricy at $194 but this 3.5" figure looks much more reasonable at $5..

» Oh and to make a service like the above even cooler. There is a consumer grade/priced3D Desktop Scanner coming out from a company called Realview.

» Wibe7.tv is a pretty neat way to surf Youtube videos.

» Timelapse video of a cat crawling over a guy all night long

» These little 7" 800x480 USB plug-in monitors are going to be really cool when they start hitting later this year.

» Minoru 3D web cam is shipping for $89.99. Sortof of neat. I pulled out some old red and blue glasses from a comic book and watched this sample video. Also noticed there were some other 3D videos on Youtube, but the red blue glasses made me a little dizzy after a bit.

» Ha!

» I played with Microsoft's Songsmith It's a novelty type program that automaticlly creates Casio Keyboard type accompaniement to go with your singing.

Videos

» Two great videos from Onion News Network Apple introduces Macbook Wheel and Attractive Girls Union Refuses To Enter Into Talks With Mike Greenman. The second is especially amusing.

» Asus t91 8.9" Tablet Netbook $499??? in March 2009??? Want!

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Good Morning

Press Play.

(Saw this on a twitter friend's tweet. Recorded it. Forgot to turn off the Mic. So you hear me cough a couple times. Works for the song though. Title is evident when you play it. Artist is Jens Lekman.)

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he's just not that into you

Given that title I'd usually think twice about a movie like this... but then I watched the trailer. There are alot of really interesting actors in this film:

Watch the trailer below:

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David Pogue Talk on Internet Telephony stuff

Yeah, it sounds boring, but it actually opens and closes with a nice musical parody number and he goes over alot of cool stuff you can do blending your cellphone with the internet.

Watch it.

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Snapter
Cool piece of software that let's you shoot a document or a whiteboard etc. with your digital camera and then it straightens it out and crops it for you. Free but after 11 days it adds a watermark . I haven't seen how big the watermark is yet.

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BB Free Font: Whiteboard Modern Demo
A free font from Bitbox. Nice White Board style font.

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This is a Test
This is a test of a new link to blog system I am using

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Random Non-Sequiters

» I saw the new Battlestar Webisodes, Face of the Enemy yesterday. Really really good. As good as any regular episode. I did miss Episode 9 which probably has a little bit of climactic expostion... but even without that. Great webepisode... Can't wait for the remainder of the season to begin in a few weeks.

» Also saw Valkyrie aka How Tom Cruise almost killed Hitler yesterday. I don't recommend it. First off, Cruise doesn't kill Hitler, you know that going into the story. Since there is no other emotional or plot component to the story, what would normally be a suspense thriller type of movie, loses all it's suspense. It's just a bla film. Don't even bother with the DVD.

Let's Go Surfing

» So, um does this SMS article mean that SMS is going to basically be free soon 'cause that would be cool. SMS is dying anyway (albehit a very slooooooooooow death) what with email enabled phones popping up everywhere.

» Inequality and the Sergey Brin Effect

As best-selling writer and investor Nassim Nicholas Taleb points out in The Black Swan, safe occupations are those where the worker is paid a fixed amount per unit of time. An accountant or a nurse is not going to become extremely rich or extremely poor; they could be called “billers,” because they bill for their time. On the other hand, a professional singer or a software entrepreneur is playing in a winners-take-most tournament. The difference in talent between an international pop star and an unknown lounge singer may actually be quite small. However, the nature of these fields is that the difference in rewards can be enormous. People who choose these sorts of occupations could be called “players.”

There is also another factor at work. A trend is underway in America for marriage to be increasingly “assortative.” That means children of well-educated parents tend to marry one another and the children of less educated parents tend to marry one another. This was less the case a few generations ago. For example, sociologists Christine Schwartz of the University of Wisconsin and Robert Mare of UCLA found that beginning in the early 1970s there was a striking “decline in the odds that those with very low levels of education marry up.” And they found that between 1940 and the late 1970s the likelihood that someone with only a high-school diploma would marry someone with a college degree dropped by over 40 percent.

According to their view, two generations ago, a husband and wife married in order to share production, with the man working in the market and the woman working at home. Today, the husband and wife are both likely to work in the market, and they choose one another because they have similar tastes in consumption.

» Papercase makes it easy to print Paper Cases with art and description labels for Burned DVDs.
1. Drag this Papercase link to your links tool bar.
2. Goto Netflix and browse for a movie. (you don't have to be a netflix member to do this.)
3. Once on the movie's "description page" click the link. Nothing will happen except a dialog will pop up saying your case is ready to print.
4. "Print" your browser page (A case will print, not the page)

Apparently this also works with music.aol.com and Picasa.

Videos

» Dave Letterman, Top 10 George W. Bush moments.

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